Blindness

Another weekend trip to lake Winnipesaukee, another book done. This time around it's Jose Saramago's magnum opus, Blindness. Blindness begins with a man in his car at a stoplight who doesn't move when the light turns green. People surround the car and try to talk some sense into him, when finally it's revealed that he has suddenly and inexplicably gone blind. A few hours after some good samaritans take care of the situation, they find that they have gone blind as well, and the condition starts spreading like a disease. The first third of the book details the quick response the government takes- all known victims and the people they came in contact with are hauled off to a mental institution for quarantine, and we're introduced to the seven main characters, none of whom are ever named- the little boy, the doctor and his wife, the first blind man and his wife, the old man and the girl with the dark glasses. Just to make things more interesting, for no apparent reason one of these characters can see fine, and he's the witness to all of the horrors committed in the asylum once things go wrong. This made for the most interesting part of the book- a gang of thugs somehow takes over the asylum, hoarding food and ruling with an iron fist, all while our hero with the gift of sight plots to take them all down, eventually leading to a very satisfying conclusion. But wait, there's still a third act! By the time a few escape from quarantine, they get to see how things have changed in the real world since the epidemic broke out just two weeks before- I won't go into details, but I had higher hopes for this part of the book but it really just kind of dragged. The thing is, Saramago has his own style of writing where all conversations are written as lengthy stream-of-conscious paragraphs going on for pages at a time. Whether this was his intention or the translator's (the book was originally written in Portuguese) I don't know, and when the subject was interesting enough I barely noticed, but at times it got pretty rough. Anyway, the book came together with a decent but somewhat easy conclusion that wrapped up just enough plot lines to not frustrate me, and for that I give it credit and a recommendation. Will I return to Saramago in the future? Perhaps. I've never heard of his other works, but I'm intrigued enough by Blindness to see what else he's got.